October, 2008 Archive

We’d like to remind listeners to our podcast that the Half Price Sky HD offer ends this week, on Friday the 31st of October 2008.

Get the Sky+ High Definition box for just £75, and there’s a £15 credit when you order online at http://packages.sky.com/see/EquipmentSkyHD.aspx.

With two new channels due in November, that’ll total 26 HD channels, by far the widest choice in the UK. Here’s our channel list:

• BBC HD
• Biography HD
• Channel 4 HD
• Crime & Investigation HD
• Discovery HD
• Eurosport HD
• FX HD
• History HD
• Luxe TV HD
• National Geographic HD
• Rush HD
• Sky1 HD
• Sky Action HD
• Sky Arts HD
• Sky Comedy HD
• Sky Movies Drama HD
• Sky Movies Family HD
• Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror HD
• Sky Movies Modern Greats HD
• Sky Movies Premier HD
• Sky Real Lives HD
• Sky Screen 1 HD
• Sky Screen 2 HD
• Sky Sports 1 HD
• Sky Sports 2 HD
• Sky Sports 3 HD

More details on Sky’s HD site, or on FrequencyCast’s UK HD page

If you’ve not already voted in the European podcast awards, you only have a few days left to cast your vote. If you want to vote for FrequencyCast, click on the link below…

Thanks everyone… Carl & Pete

The first Freesat hard-disk recorder is expected to appear in mid-November.

Made by Humax, the Foxsat-HDR will bear the “Freesat+” badge, have a dual tuner, and will support HD, series link, live pause, live TV rewind and the ability to split recordings.

With two SCART sockets, one HDMI high definition socket, the Humax Foxsat-HDR has a 320GB hard drive, and will be in the shops in mid-November, with a pricetag of £299.

At last, a chance to go back to your childhood.

Small, and made of brown plasticine, the adventures of Morph on BBC kids show Take Hart holds many a happy memory for the Frequencycast boys.

So, you can imagine how happy we were to see this “My Own Morph” package. The only downside, is you have to make him yourself.

The kit includes three appropriately-sized chunks of plasticine, and a bunch of morph-sized accessories. Don’t worry if you’re not the arty type, with a little practice, it’s a cinch, and the kit includes full instructions on how to make and mould your Morph.

Best of all, the DVD includes a bunch of classic Morph adventures.

“My own Morph”, with DVD, is available now from firebox.com

The company behind the Discovery Channel has secured a slot on Freeview.

Using content from the existing Discovery-branded channels, the new channel on Freeview apparently won’t carry the Discovery name, and will be free-to-view from early 2009.

The slot on the Freeview network was put up for auction by SDN (owned by ITV) in June 2008 and is on Multiplex A.

Shortwave radio enthusiasts are up in arms about Homeplugs – and the local interference that they can create.

What is a Homeplug? These are used in situations where you need to run a broadband connection around your home, but you can’t, or don’t want to, use wi-fi. Homeplugs come in packs of two – a transmitter and a receiver, and use the mains wiring in your house to transmit data.

Homeplugs (also known as Powerline adapters) are becoming quite common, and are readily available from the likes of Maplin, Dabs.com and BT. They’re supplied by BT as part of their digital TV offering, BT Vision, for circumstances where it’s not easy to connect the BT Vision box directly to a BT Home Hub.

So, what’s the problem? Well according to the site UKQRM, these powerline adapters are causing significant interference between 3Mhz to 30Mhz, which is the band used to pick up shortwave radio, affecting reception of a number of shortwave stations hundreds of feet away from HomePlugs.

Just who uses Shortwave these days though? Well, apart from the overseas stations that you can get on shortwave, the band is used for marine and aircraft traffic, as well as radio amateurs and an International radio service called DRM (Digital Radio Mondial)

There’s an active petition to the UK Government to get these devices banned – see the Petition to save shortwave

UPDATE: We featured this story in Show 32 of our podcast. Got a comment? Please add it below.

(Thanks to Mike Carrington for bringing this to our attention)

The UK TV regular Ofcom has today confirmed that BBC, ITV and Channel 4 (with Welsh-language broadcaster S4C) will soon be broadcasting in High Definition over Freeview.

Channel 4 plans to simulcast an HD version of their main content as well as show show HD movies during peak hours. ITV will offer their 6 to 11pm content in HD, as well as the FA Cup and the 2010 Football World Cup in HD.

It’s expected that the Freeview HD services will start from late Autumn 2009 in the Granada TV region, with the rest of the UK coming on-stream by 2012 in accordance with the Digital Switchover rollout. To get HD on Freeview via a TV aerial, you’ll need an HD-ready TV set. You’ll also need to buy a Freeview HD set-top box, which are not yet available.

A fourth HD slot will also be available, which could start as early as 2010.

For more, see the Ofcom Announcement

October 2008 sees Blue Peter hit its 50 year anniversary, and everyone has a special memory of TV’s longest-running kid’s programme.

To celebrate this anniversary, there’s a new book just out looking at the series’ history and classic moments. We’ll be reviewing this in Show 32 of our podcast, so take a listen.

The book has 192 pages – the recommended retail price £14.99, but we’ve found it with over five pounds off at Waterstones Online

We’ve now seen a number of UKTV channels move from boring names such as UKTV G2 to names like Dave, Alibi and Watch. Now, two more of the UKTV channel lineup are about to change:

• UKTV People: Becomes “Blighty”, featuring “typically British” content
• UKTV Documentary: Becomes “Eden”, making you feel like like you’re somewhere far away

Channels are set to re-brand in early 2009

We’ve just released a 5 minute ‘update’ podcast, looking at Channel 4’s decision to pull out of the digital radio business, meaning bad news for the future of national DAB radio in the UK

We also feature a couple of questions on eBook readers, some BT Vision news, and several ways to save money on PVRs, Sky HD and Humax set-top boxes, which you’ll find at www.frequencycast.co.uk/codes.

Listen via iTunes, or at www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html#update

 

 FrequencyCast Update 12 Oct 2008 - DAB News [4:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As we’ve covered in our podcasts on many occasions, Channel 4 has been planning to make a big splash in digital radio. Today, they announced that those plans are now dead.

The proposed stations e4 Radio, Channel 4 Radio music station Pure 4 no won’t go ahead, with Channel 4’s Andy Duncan blaming the economic downturn for the decision.

Dark days for DAB, with it looking increasingly likely that there’s little future for national commercial digital radio.

Update: Podcast released covering the story – It’s attached to this blog entry, and it’s also at www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html#update

 

 Channel 4 Radio Update [4:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

TV channel Five has launched their 8-day catch-up service on BT Vision.

If you’ve missed a Five show, such as Home and Away, The Gadget Show, It Pays To Watch, Neighbours or Fifth Gear, then you can view them up to 8 days after transmission on your TV. Some shows are available for even longer

Demand Five shows cost from 79p each, or for only £3, you can sign up to BT Vision’s TV Replay package, which also offers BBC and Channel 4’s catch-up TV services.

Five will also be adding their kids content, Milkshake, to the BT Vision library, with series such as Make Way for Noddy and Mr Men from 49p an episode.

BT Vision comes with a free digital TV recorder if you get your broadband from BT Total Broadband. More on our BT Vision page, or at btvision.bt.com

The most popular of the BBC digital radio stations, BBC 7, rebranded itself to BBC Radio 7, last Saturday, the 4th of October.

With TV stations rebranding to names like Dave, Alibi and Watch for no readily apparent reason, this is quite an innocent change. According to Mary Kalemkerian, the Head of Programmes at
BBC Radio 7, “… BBC 7 is sometimes perceived as a television channel, following on from the launches of BBC Three and BBC Four. As many regular listeners already refer to the station as Radio 7, it seemed the right decision to incorporate the magic word ‘radio’.”

So now you know!

More on the rebranded comedy, drama and kids station at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio7/

We’re trying out a new listener survey – Please tell us what you think of our shows at http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/limesurvey/admin/admin.php?sid=41369

Show 31 of FrequencyCast, the UK’s TV and Tech podcast, is online now. Here’s what we cover:

• News Updates: TV and Radio re-brands, half-price HD, Google phones, and Nuts loyalty.
• Focus – eBook Readers: Like the idea of an electronic book? We explain about eBooks.
• Hands on: We look at the updated Cowon media player and three new DAB radios.
• Your Questions: Home Hub, Hadron Colliders, Slingbox and Freesat PVRs.

You can download Show 31 direct to your MP3 player or listen online at http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html. You can also get us via iTunes.

 

 FrequencyCast UK Show 31 [30:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download